The global energy crisis has placed new demands for creative technologies to provide affordable and renewable energy to an increasing world population. In response to the increasing raw material price of silicon, silicon-based solar cell manufacturers have attempted to reduce the amount of polysilicon used per solar cell simply by thinning the wafers. However, as silicon solar cells are thinned to reduce manufacturing costs, internal reflection and especially backside surface carrier (electron) recombination-related efficiency losses increase rapidly and begin to dominate the performance of conventional silicon solar cells. As an example, thinning a silicon wafer from 300 um to 100 um reduces the sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency from 18.5% to 16.5% for a silicon solar cell constructed using a conventional aluminum Back Surface Field (BSF) due to backside surface recombination of photo-generated carriers. Hence, there is a need to reduce or eliminate backside surface recombination loss of photo-generated carriers in these lower cost thinned silicon solar cells to significantly improve their efficiency.